A variety of methods and hardware equipment have been devised for compressing, crushing, and extracting liquid from logs, lumber and other lignocellulosic materials. The Gyles U.S. Pat. No. 128,387 of 1872 illustrates the broad . concept of "removing the moisture which saturates the woody fiber of lumber" by drawing and feeding sawn pieces of lumber or planks between compressing rolls. The Buchanan U.S. Pat. No. 4,285,373 describes an apparatus for crushing logs between endless loops or belts. The belts are tapered or spaced in a configuration leading to a tapering throat. As the log passes into the narrowing throat, it is progressively split and broken laterally. The log is fractured and reduced to longitudinally extending slivers and strips.
A number of other hardware equipment arrangements press or crush logs. The Stadler U.S. Pat. No. 2,510,674 describes the use of a cone and cylinder for creating an annular compression zone. The Jones U.S. Pat. No. 4,085,783 describes the use of a platform and hydraulic press for subjecting a horizontal stack of logs to mechanical compression for squeezing sap and resin out of the ends of the logs and for loosening bark.
No prior art of which applicant is aware contemplates whole tree processing nor do any of the references describe appropriate hardware equipment for successively processing an entire tree to a substantially uniform wood material reduced to the fiber or filament constituents. The use of graduated rollers in a graduated rolling mill is described in U.S. Pat. No. 11,769 for producing cotton and in U.S. Pat. No. 3,660,207 for producing laminates. No prior art references or disclosures, however, describe the use of a graduated rolling mill and related hardware for processing an entire tree, successively reducing or "wringing" elongate trunk pieces, and effectively "extruding" elongate wood pieces as thin wood sheets for further processing. No patents of which applicant is aware describe systems, methods and hardware for further processing the entire tree into a substantially uniform length wood fiber material useful in preparing a wood material slurry for injection molding.
Methods and equipment have also been devised for reconstituting and molding wood fibers and lignocellulosic materials to produce molded products. Typically, however, as in the Geimer U.S. Pat. No. 4,393,019, an additional artificial thermosetting resin binder is added to the slurry or mixture before molding the reconstituted wood product. The Marra U.S. Pat. No. 3,671,377 describes a method for producing composite products with isotropic structural characteristics in which the wood fiber filler material grains are oriented in all directions to give a "three dimensional skeletal structure". Artificial polymer resin binders are added to the slurry.
No prior art of which applicant is aware discloses the custom molding of wood products from a wood material slurry composed essentially entirely of the constituents of a whole tree with the lignocellulose fibers and filaments processed to a substantially uniform friable wood material and mixed with the liquid resin constituents derived from the tree to form a moldable slurry with additives where desired.